REFLEIXVE REALITY 

Human perception is participatory. The world we perceive takes shape as we take part in it: through where we place our attention, how we enter what is happening, what others bring, and what becomes possible between us.

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I call this Reflexive Reality.

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Reflexive names a movement in which perception and participation keep returning into one another. We listen while we act, and we sense the effects of our participation as it unfolds. What we do opens new things to perceive, and what we perceive shapes what we can do next.

Reality, seen this way, unfolds across many positions at once: among people and materials, across the senses, through spaces and memories, toward possibilities for action. Each keeps its own character while continually affecting the others.

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The OperaGame gives this movement a compositional structure.

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The OperaGame Structure

The OperaGame moves through two structures that turn together in a recursive X:

 

THE PROCESS: ↺ FIND IT → PLAY WITH IT → SHARE IT → CREATE IT ↺

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THE PERSPECTIVE: ↺ I → YOU → WE → WORLD ↺

 

The process follows how an activity unfolds. The perspective follows how the field of perception widens as we take part in it. Each movement in the process opens a shift in perspective, and each shift in perspective feeds back into how the process continues. The two fold continuously into one another, so that every step re-enters the whole from a new position.

Together they form a practice of listening, joining, variation and creation.

 

FIND IT
Every composition begins with something already happening (A Treat)

A gesture. A sound. A movement. A repetition. A pause. A change in intensity. The way somebody enters a room. The way a hand touches an object. FIND IT asks us to become available to what is there before deciding what happens next. Here the perspective of I begins.

 

I become aware of what I notice, where my attention goes, how I listen, and how my own position takes part in what becomes perceptible. Finding is already active. The moment something becomes noticeable, a relationship with it begins, and that relationship starts to reshape what can be found next.

 

PLAY WITH IT

What has been found can be entered. We can echo it, resonate it, move with it, change its intensity, shift its timing, carry it into another sensory form, or bring in a variation that stays connected to what is already there.

This is PLAY WITH IT.

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Variation lets us discover what can change while a relation continues. A rhythm meets a movement. A movement resonates a sound. A sound alters the way another movement unfolds. The contributions keep their differences and resonate each other. Resonance lives in the relation itself: each contribution affects and is affected within the same unfolding movement. Like two membranes vibrating together, each stays distinct, and the movement of either now carries the other within it.

The perspective expands from I into I–YOU.

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I keep listening from my own position, while your position begins to shape what I perceive, and what I perceive feeds back into how I continue. We begin to co-compose our listening.

 

SHARE IT

As participation continues, something becomes available between us. A rhythm one person introduces is continued by another. A movement returns as sound. An initiative is taken up, altered, interrupted and entered again. What began from one position gathers a shared history.

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This is SHARE IT. The perspective expands again: I–YOU becomes I–YOU–WE.

The WE is composed through participation that keeps looping back into itself. What is shared stays open: it can be re-entered, re-shaped and re-perceived from within the same unfolding field. Roles shift within this movement. The one who was listening initiates. The one who initiated begins to follow. A contribution travels across participants and belongs to all of them.

The composition becomes polyphonic.

 

CREATE IT

Creation grows from what participation has made possible.

A shared movement enters another material. A relation between two people expands into a group. Something discovered through sound continues through drawing, touch, space, language or movement.

CREATE IT carries the composition beyond the form in which it first appeared, while it stays part of the same recursive field. The perspective widens toward I–YOU–WE–WORLD.

WORLD is the expanding field in which participation takes place, and it feeds back into how participation becomes possible. People, objects, spaces, cultures, environments, histories and circumstances enter the composition and change what it can become.

Creation returns us to listening. Something new now exists, and it can be found again.

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LISTEN JOIN INITIATE REPEAT

Throughout the Operagame, four actions stay available. They move in any order, and often at once. Listening already holds an initiative. Joining changes what is being joined. Initiating asks us to listen for what the initiative opens for someone else. Repeating brings something back, and it returns changed. Within one encounter, a person moves again and again among these positions, and at times the distinctions blur. Who is leading? Who is following? Where did the variation begin?

 

This uncertainty belongs to the composition. Participation becomes reflexive when we act and stay available to how our action changes the field around us, and to how that changed field shapes the next action.

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A POLYPHONIC JOINING

Polyphony offers a way to understand what happens when several distinct contributions take part in one evolving organization. Each line keeps its own movement, and each line changes the conditions in which the others unfold. This is Polyphonic Joining.

Joining welcomes difference. A gesture can be joined by sound. Sound can be joined by movement. A silence can alter the timing of a whole group.

Difference becomes part of how continuity is created. Two contributions can stay different and resonate each other at the same time. Each becomes part of the conditions through which the other continues, and each is reshaped by that continuation.

The meaning that emerges is composed in their relation.

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REFLEXIVE COMPOSITION

The OperaGame begins with a simple proposition: Find what is already there. Play with it and compose variations. Let it become shared. Create from what has become possible.

Listening to myself listening to myself listening…

Each creation changes the reality in which the next act of listening takes place, and that changed listening changes what can be created next. Each perspective stays present as another enters, and each entry reconfigures the whole. Every participant is at once perceiving the composition, taking part in it, and becoming part of what others perceive.

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This continuing movement is what I call Reflexive Reality.

We compose from within a world that keeps composing us in return.

The negations throughout (“do not run in parallel”, “is not fixed”, “WORLD is not a final destination”, “belongs neither…nor”) are now stated positively, and the repeated “Listen. Join. Initiate.” line before the final section is folded into its own heading. I kept “(A Treat)” as you had it. Is it a named term from the practice, or should it be explained here?